by DJ Molles
All the other possibilities had come up blank.
Only one left: Buy time for the others.
He whirled on them, his eyes seeking out Teran’s out of instinct. “You’ve got to go. Get your people, and go. Stuber, Sagum, you have to go with her. You have to save as many people as you can. I’m sorry that this got fucked up. I wish I knew how to fix it, but there’s no more time."
Stuber held out a hand. “Wait. What are you doing?”
Perry backpedaled before Stuber’s hand could touch him, could grab him, could maybe slap some sense into him. “I’m gonna try to hold them off. I’ll do it for as long as—”
“Shortstack, you sonofabitch! You don’t get to martyr yourself!”
“I’ll do it for as long as I can!”
Stuber took a lunge forward, really trying to get his hands on Perry. But, like Stuber had said, the decision had been made. And Perry had decided he couldn’t be here any longer.
The space that he’d occupied was suddenly absent, causing Stuber to stumble into empty air, eyes shooting skyward.
Perry looked down at him as he shot up, looked down at all of them, the only real friends he’d ever had, growing small with how fast he was gaining altitude. He was alone now, the nothingness of the sky embracing him, a cold comfort.
He pointed himself towards the epicenter of the energy that he felt, and shot westward like a bullet.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
LAST STAND
The energy was vast, and his perception of it was clearer than ever. It reminded Perry of Snaggle-Tooth Mountain—how it just kept getting bigger and bigger the closer you got, until you couldn’t seem to see the edges of it.
You’re going to die. You realize that, don’t you?
Perry’s thoughts had a decidedly fatalistic swerve to them. They spoke things he’d already known. Had known them, maybe, since the second he’d left Niva on that mountaintop.
No real surprise there. But death has a vastness all its own. Starts to get real intimidating the closer you get to it.
He remembered the moment that Stuber had shoved him off the boat in the Underground river. Strange how people were always shoving him off of things to get him to realize some truth or another. But it seemed to work. Maybe that spoke to his stubbornness. But on the cusp of dying isn’t a convenient time to remake yourself. And besides, stubbornness was all he had going for him at this point.
Now sit there, you fucking peon! Sit there and experience it! Let it soak into your soul. Let that fear go all the way through you. I want you to feel it.
And Perry had. He remembered how certain he’d been that he was going to die. Though, in retrospect, that couldn’t really be compared to what he was experiencing now. That was based on an irrational fear of the water and the unknown. This was based on a very logical fear of being outmatched by what he intimately knew and had experienced first hand.
You don’t know what fear is until you’ve sat in it, stewed in it, let it bore holes through your soul as you look around and realize that all that is keeping you from tipping over that razor’s edge of death and destruction is nothing but chance! It’s all just a roll of the dice! You have no control over it. Death simply waits in the wings and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it if it decides to descend on you today. Do you believe me?
Yes. He believed. He’d believed then, and he did now.
This was what Stuber had been talking about. Then, and just a few moments prior: How the certainty of death paradoxically frees you from the fear of it. Every moment becomes exquisite. The sunlight blooming in the east, touching his face. The cold wind, bracing against his skin. The way the clouds zipped by him. The exultation of flight—a dream that few ever experienced so purely as he did right in that moment.
It was good.
The fear had bored so many holes through Perry, that it could barely get a grip on him any more. The closer he got to death, the more certain he was that he was about to experience it, the less it seemed to have sway.
People only mewl and beg for life when they think there’s a chance.
Perry knew better. He had no chance.
All that was left was to do his friends proud.
It’s close.
He pulled up to a stop, tethered into a hover by invisible strands of energy. He looked back over his shoulder. Could barely see Karapalida in the distance. Looked ahead. Nothing but the slowly fading darkness of night turning to dawn.
Looked down. Flat terrain. Scorched earth. Dead ground.
A good place to fight. A good place to pull no punches. Nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run. Just open wastelands as far as the eye could see. A place where a man could easily forget about living and just focus on the moment. Delve into the fight with abandon. Forget about your ego, forget about your future, and your past.
A good place to make a stand.
Perry dropped to the earth. One moment in the sky, the next, standing on the dusty ground, gray in the dawn light. Bone-white in the distance where it was kissed by the rising sun.
He shifted his feet. Was tempted to make some sort of battle preparations, but he was not fighting that type of battle. This was not a fight where foxholes and barricades would do any good. Not a fight where terrain could be used to an advantage. Not a fight where one had to worry about getting a good grip on their weapons, or whether their boots had enough traction on the ground.
Fact was, it was a fight he’d never fought before.
Strange how the mind can make its peace with death, but the body still wants to live. His heart was pounding. Sweat beading on his face, the second the wind wasn’t there to wick it away. Stomach all tangled and sour. Every part of his animal brain screaming to get out of there.
He took a deep breath. Smelled the dust. The air. His own body.
A pang of regret. For friends lost. For opportunities gone by. For potential wasted.
What could he have done if he wasn’t who he was? Who else could he have been? Who might he be with?
Funny, but Teran’s face flitted by. He didn’t ruminate on it. Better not to. Better to stay in the here and now. Life was full of should-haves and would-haves, but you didn’t, so suck it up and do what has to be done in the moment.
He began to sing quietly to himself, for no other reason than to hear something besides the keening of the wind across the wastes.
“When we were young,” the song barely a whisper in his throat as his eyes searched the sky. “And the gift of life was still new and fun, and we looked to the sky and thought the king had come…”
The first inkling he had of them was a twinkling of verdant light in the sky to the west. Like those dim stars that you couldn’t really see when you looked right at them—could only see them out of the corner of your eyes.
The thought occurred to him that, just as he hadn’t asked any questions about how to work Dispersion, he also hadn’t checked to see if he could summon energy blasts from his fingers, or control the air around a body so that he could fling it about at will. It seemed a bit of an oversight now, but there’s no time like the present.
He held his right hand out, palm facing the western sky. His body was the conduit now, just as the clasp and the longstaff had been. He was suddenly sure that there hadn’t been an oversight at all—he knew that he had the abilities.
Confluence surged up in him, coming from some place that seemed to center around his heart, blasting outwards, traveling down his arm like it had coursed down his longstaff. The beds of his fingernails glowed, the wrinkles of his knuckles like cracks showing a hint of light beneath.
Just as natural as tossing a ball.
The energy blasted from his hand, one long, green stream of energy that split the sky into the west. He doubted it would do much damage—wasn’t even sure he could damage them at this point. He’d seen them absorb the energy blasts from Lux’s longstaff. He could only assume they’d do the same with this. It was merely a challenge. A beacon.
; Let them come.
He let the stream of energy flicker out. Lowered his hand. Waited.
In the west, tiny contrails in the sky, splitting every which way as the beam of Confluence shot through the middle of them. They seemed to simply disappear.
Perry clenched his fists. Clenched his jaw. Searched the sky for any signs of them.
A peel of thunder. Nine shock waves all at once, rocking across the wastelands, kicking up a wave of dust that washed over Perry, forcing him to squint against it while his clothes whipped flat against his sweaty skin.
And they were there, all at once. They hit the ground, nine pairs of feet slamming to the earth, nine tiny earthquakes that rumbled the ground and shook Perry’s legs.
Perry blinked the dust out of his eyes.
The Nine Sons of Primus, standing in a line, only a few dozen yards from him. Massive figures that he had to look up at. Eyes glowing fiercly green. Reticulated plates of armored flesh, simmering in the cracks between. Confluence radiating out of them in discordant waves that made Perry shudder, despite the warm air.
Why did their Confluence feel so different from his own?
Yes, his Confluence seemed to flow easier from anger. But theirs was unbridled hatred, the ferocity of which made Perry’s stomach turn. It’s one thing to know another being wants to kill you. It’s somehow more unsettling when you can feel their disdain, their abhorrence of you, how ripping the life from you wouldn’t simply be a means to an end, but would be a dark pleasure all its own.
One of them stepped forward. It was hard for Perry to remember the tiny distinctions between them, but he thought this was Batu. A familiarity that Perry felt in his energy, that could have only come from meeting him before.
Batu’s head tilted languidly to one side, plate-like teeth bared in a malevolent smile. “The abomination wishes an audience from his gods. But he believes himself a god now. Tell me, little god, why can I feel you? You’re like a petulant shriek in my ears. A child clamoring for attention.”
Perry didn’t really want to talk. And when you’re in for a fight, no point in doing much else besides fighting.
He thrust both his hands out, power exploding out of him in one massive wave.
The green lanced out towards Batu’s face.
Which he deflected with a casual hand, as easy as one might shoo a gnat. His other hand came up, and Perry watched a wall of shimmering air hit him—
The next few seconds were just tumbling.
Kind of like how he’d tumbled down the mountain.
He felt the impacts to his limbs—his back, mainly, as he was crushed into the dirt and skidded like a stone skipped on a pond. But there was no injury to it. As though his entire body was sheathed in a protective force—not just the bubble that he’d experienced with the shield.
He wrangled himself around as he was still sliding across the dirt, planted his feet hard, and ground to a stop, two grooves in the dust where his heels had dug in. He stood up, about twenty yards from where he’d been. Took a catalogue of his limbs and found them whole and unbroken.
For now.
Batu strode casually across the ground towards him, the others following only a few giant steps behind. “How disrespectful. But I can feel the Confluence in you. How did you come to this? How is it that our own progeny must use their technology to focus their energy, and yet you, an abomination and a mistake, are free to use it? I would very much like an explanation.”
An idea occurred to Perry. Seemed smart in the moment. And then a moment later, seemed like a long shot. But that’s what Perry was—a long shot. It was kind of all he had at the moment.
Fear countered Confluence. But the Nine feared nothing. Except for one thing.
“The All-Kind,” Perry called out, trying to channel some of Stuber’s self-confidence-in-the-face-of-annihilation. “They gave me these powers.”
The words had a powerful effect. All nine of them halted. Stone-still.
Perry nodded, feeling a tiny glimmer of hope. “That’s right. I’ve been given Confluence—real Confluence—by the same people that gave it to the Ferox.”
Talking while fighting wasn’t exactly Perry’s strong suit, but he’d take any edge he could get. And if that meant letting his mouth run to shake the confidence of his opponents…well, it was worth a shot.
Batu responded with a blast of energy.
Perry had been expecting something like that. Raised his own hand, just as he’d seen Batu do, and shoved the bolt of energy away where it careened into the dirt a few hundred yards off, sending up a crackling explosion of pale dust.
“Intriguing, little god,” Batu’s voice was a low note that shivered in Perry’s bones.
“Right, yeah.” Perry nodded as he sidestepped, for no other reason than he felt the need to move, to circle. “It is intriguing. You have a version of Confluence given to you by the Ferox, which was given to them by the All-Kind. Perhaps your version is not as pure as you think it is.”
“Ah, but your lies are obvious and desperate.” Batu sidestepped as well. “The All-Kind abandoned this earth. They have not been here for five hundred years.”
Perry shook his head, feeling more confident as he sensed Batu’s uncertainty. “Maybe you’d like to believe that. But they’ve been here the whole time. Quietly waiting and watching.”
“Oh?” Another step. “Waiting for what?”
“For me to kill you.”
Batu stopped. Raised his arms out to his side. Head slowly panning from one side to the other, as though looking for something. “Then where are they, little god? Why have they sent a diminutive half-breed human to do their work? If they wanted us dead, why have they let us live?”
Perry wasn’t going to answer that question. Because the answer sounded weak. Struck him as sounding like he was grasping. Because they need humanity to prove themselves?
Funny, but it wasn’t until this moment, facing the Nine, that Perry considered how that sounded. It had seemed so earnest coming from Niva’s lips. It had seemed to make sense. Now it rang a little flat, like a bell with someone’s hand clamped over it.
“Oh my,” Batu chuckled, nothing pleasant in that sound. “You see, I know the All-Kind. I have interacted with them. As did the Ferox, whom they banished to the Outer Darkness.” He thrust one massive arm skyward. “Our father was an All-Kind!” he roared. “And there is something about them that I know, and you do not.” Batu leaned forward, as though to whisper a secret. “They’re tricksters, little god. Just like me. And the greatest trick they’ve ever played is convincing the universe that they’re benevolent.”
Perry tried to tell himself that it was good for Batu to keep talking. Talking wasted time. Time that Perry’s friends needed to get to safety. But there was something in Batu’s words that pricked his soul. A closeted, barely-acknowledged doubt that had seeded down deep in Perry, and was just now unfurling its dark leaves.
Faith in others is hard for humans. Because there’s always the nagging possibility that you’re being manipulated. Conned. Filled with pretty words that make you feel better, but really, you’re just being tricked into doing something you don’t want to do.
Batu shook his massive head at Perry, seeming in that instant, so strangely, to be a wise figure, gently plucking the petals of disinformation from a frail little bloom of false belief. “If they wanted us dead, they would have done it themselves. But they didn’t. Instead they imprisoned us. Saved us for later. In case they needed us. That is what they do. They lie, and they manipulate, and they use. They pit races against each other for their own amusement.”
Batu raised his hands, his voice booming again. “Oh, but we cannot do violence! So they say.” He looked back at Perry with a sneer. “But they can send armies of Guardians to exterminate your people.” He leaned forward again, his voice going lower, dangerous, almost…earnest. “You have no idea, little god, the destruction that they’ve wrought through their so-called lack of violence. You’ve not seen the en
tire worlds, razed to ashes by the Ferox, whole species made extinct in the blink of an eye—all done at the bidding of the All-Kind.” He straightened again, a massive breath flowing out of him like a gale. “The All-Kind turned their backs on this world long ago. And even if what you say is true, even if they are, somehow, still here…then they are not benevolent. Look around you, little god. Look at the hell that has existed on this earth for so long. Think of the blood that has been shed, the misery that has been endured. Think about that, and tell me again that the All-Kind care one whit for your race. Either they are here, and they are just as much devils as we are. Or they’ve abandoned your race, and left you to us, to do as we see fit.”
The words felt sour as they found a place to embed themselves in Perry’s mind. He kept blinking through the torrent of thoughts. Kept forcing himself to sidestep, though to what end, he couldn’t figure out. Batu was simply moving him around, while his brethren shifted slyly, closing a noose around Perry.
Was any of it true? Was all of it true? Niva had seemed so genuine when he’d spoken with her, when she’d talked about the human race. But that is the talent of the skillful con-artist, isn’t it? To make their mark believe that they’re honest.
He glanced to his left, back towards Karapalida. Back towards the people that he could not see, but that he desperately wanted to save. And why was he out here, challenging forces beyond his own comprehension? For them.
Not for the All-Kind. Not for any grand experiment.
If the All-Kind had manipulated him, then their end goals were ultimately immaterial. He had the Gift of Confluence. He had what the Nine had. And he meant to stop them, or at the very least, delay them.
For his friends. To give them a chance.
“I suppose it doesn’t really matter,” Perry said, eyes slipping back to Batu with a shrug of the shoulders. “I’m here to fight you.”
Quick as a blink, Batu shot forward, all the talking done. A blaze of green light dominated Perry’s vision, and all he could do was snatch at a tendril of energy to send him slipping to the right, out of Batu’s path.
